Dressin' up THE Dress...(tutorial)

With the start of Spring/Summer and hot weather arriving, we made a trip to Marshall's to pick out some new shorts and dresses for the girls. My oldest picked out this plain jane dress, which to me SCREAMED "blank canvas". You will have to scroll to the bottom to see how my Daughter "loved" Mommy's idea!
The neckline looked rather plain to me so I thought I'd add a little dazzle with some ribbon and a vintage flower.
I started by folding over the ribbon to make pleats. The ribbon is folded at about every 1 inch and pinned directly to the neckline.
She's all pinned and ready for sewing!
Sewing is complete! be sure to go slow with you machine as you will have the added thickness of the ribbon.
Making the vintage flower! I used approx. 18 inches of 2 inch polka dotted grosgrain ribbon for my flower.
Loosely gather your ribbon and sew in the middle to allow for proper gathering. This is a good spot to heat seal your ribbon edges to prevent fraying.
Flower is complete! Don't worry about your visible threads, you will cover them later!
To make the inner layer of your flower, you will need the largest cuttlebug die in this flower set. I folded over my material tight enough to make a "heart" shape at the top. I sewed 2 stitches to keep the flower tip from opening.
Adhered my black flower tips on with E6000.
Covered my threads with a vintage LARGE rhinestone.
At this point, you can glue your pin on the back. I would've rather used a black piece of felt on the back, but I didn't have any. I'm not too worried about how the back looks like because you won't be able to see it, nor will it be going in the washer.
How snazzy is this?!!!!
Since I used a pin on the back of the flower, you can adjust her where you want:) You see that Amy Bulter fabric in the background?? Well, that my friends is my peg board that I decopauged because I didn't like the holes showing through! It's super easy to insert my hooks etc. You can see on the bottom where I store all my punches in my IKEA baskets/rods.
In the end, this WAS a surprise for my oldest Daughter and I hung it in the foyer so she could see it when she came home. Well, she hates it and told me so...said we should throw it in the trash! I never expected that from her and she asked me if I could take the ribbon and flower off?!!! Needless to say, it sent her in a total tear fest and she was terribly upset that I ruined her "normal" dress! I did hang it on her doorknob yesterday in the hopes that she would wear it today. She woke up this morning and dressed her little sister...any guesses to what little sister was wearing???!!! Little stinker!